Stanford Law School Spins Off New Venture, Offering Commercial Access to Intellectual Property Legal Data
Source: Stanford Law School Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse now run by private venture Lex Machina
STANFORD, Calif., January 5, 2010—Stanford Law School today announced the launch of a private venture in legal informatics called Lex Machina—the outgrowth of a research project called the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (IPLC). The IPLC was originally developed as an online research tool to provide real-time data on intellectual property litigation in the United States at no cost to scholars, policymakers, judges, and journalists—helping the citizenry, White House officers, federal judges, and others, see, evaluate, and ultimately improve the law of patents, copyrights, trademarks, antitrust, and trade secrets. Because the IPLC has grown so vast—developing into what is likely to become the largest legal-empirical database in the United States—a separate venture is being spun out to broaden, expand upon, and advance the system. The private venture Lex Machina will offer a commercial version of the clearinghouse at www.lexmachina.com, and host the public interest version Lex Machina IPLC Service, which will remain free to academicians, public interest researchers, judges, policymakers, and the media, at www.lexmachina.org.
"We realized that we had built this robust, highly useful product that serves the public interest and that also has very important commercial application,” said Mark Lemley, the William H. Neukom Professor of Law and the director of the Law, Science & Technology Program, “but maintaining and expanding it was a more expensive proposition then we could raise money for. So we decided to make it self-sustaining through a private venture model. Those who are conducting public interest research have a related, but different set of needs from those who are conducting commercial litigation. This venture is an attempt to serve both those needs and serve them well.”
Lex Machina is believed to be the first instance of an American law school incubating a commercial venture in the manner of an engineering department and is in keeping with Stanford University’s long tradition of hatching important breakthroughs and commercializing technological innovation. The technology underlying the IPLC, and now Lex Machina, is pathbreaking and classified as legal informatics, a nascent field.
When Lex Machina first launched as the Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse in December of 2008, the database included real-time data summaries, industry indices, and trend analysis together with a full-text search engine, providing detailed and timely information that could not be found elsewhere.
Now, the Lex Machina database has grown to cover more than 100,000 IP and antitrust cases filed in U.S. district courts since 2000, as well as outcome summaries on more than 25,000 patent infringement cases—data that can be rendered across roughly a billion different variables. And as of October, 31, 2009 more than 5,000 IP experts and government end users have benefitted from the site, including the White House, Department of Commerce, United States district courts, the Federal Circuit, IPLC advisor groups, more than 200 academicians, company and law firm supporters, non-profit lawyers, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The original IPLC project was the brainchild of Mark Lemley, a leading scholar of empirical research on IP law and policy. It was developed from scratch at Stanford Law School by Joshua Walker and George Gregory, and involved some of the nation’s top computer scientists through Stanford’s Department of Computer Science. The team has logged more than 35,000 hours of unique legal, engineering, and computer science work. Walker personally reviewed every single patent trial from 2000 on, along with tens of thousands of complex procedural events. Walker and Gregory are the founders of the commercial venture Lex Machina; Walker will serve as CEO.
“In addition to supporting the public interest charter, we plan to offer customized intelligence solutions that help in-house and law firm attorneys provide better, faster, more rigorous advice in ‘bet the company’ situations, and across the spectrum of IP litigation generally,” said Joshua Walker. “Specifically, we will offer access to advanced informatics systems and professional (expert) data tools, including proprietary case/motion analysis, and tools law firms increasingly need to win new business and work efficiently. We will help our clients make more informed business decisions about the merits of litigation—based on this unique database of legal facts, and proprietary analytic tools.”
The IPLC was developed by the Law, Science & Technology Program within Stanford Law School over the course of three years (2006 to 2009) with the generous support of a diverse group of industry and philanthropic partners who represent a wide range of industries as well as a good cross section of potential users. Similarly, the new venture has been made possible by a series of corporate investors that include leading tech law firms and operating companies. Going forward Stanford University and Stanford Law School will retain a stake in the venture. Stanford Law School will continue to grow the public site with support from Lex Machina staff and from Stanford Law faculty whose research and intellectual capital will continue to add value and help drive ongoing innovation.
“Lex Machina is an example of Stanford Law School’s ability to produce empirical scholarship that has important real-world applications," said Law School Dean Larry Kramer. "It's also a great example of how public service and private enterprise are not mutually exclusive. Public interest initiatives can dovetail with commercially viable ventures.” For example, Stanford Law School first developed the Stanford Class Action Clearinghouse, a pioneering system which, by making class actions more transparent to everyone, helped to reshape and streamline securities law and policy. “In the same vein,” Kramer said, “Lex Machina was developed in the public interest and is now a commercially viable application that offers a whole new set of tools to help judges, scholars, legislators, and policymakers better understand our IP system and reform IP law and policy, as well as to help lawyers improve client services.
Intellectual property (IP) is a key driver of the American economy, and IP litigation is big business. By one estimate, the nation’s copyright and patent industries alone contributed almost 20 percent of private industry’s share of the U.S. gross domestic product and were responsible for close to 40 percent of all private industry growth. The average patent case costs $5 million in legal fees on each side to litigate. A patent lawsuit can prevent a company from bringing a new product to market, or otherwise stall the kind of innovation that the IP system was meant to spur.
Stanford Law School Spins Off New Venture, Offering Commercial Access to Intellectual Property Legal Data
Source: Stanford Law School
Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse now run by private venture Lex Machina
STANFORD, Calif., January 5, 2010—Stanford Law School today announced the launch of a private venture in legal informatics called Lex Machina—the outgrowth of a research project called the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (IPLC). The IPLC was originally developed as an online research tool to provide real-time data on intellectual property litigation in the United States at no cost to scholars, policymakers, judges, and journalists—helping the citizenry, White House officers, federal judges, and others, see, evaluate, and ultimately improve the law of patents, copyrights, trademarks, antitrust, and trade secrets. Because the IPLC has grown so vast—developing into what is likely to become the largest legal-empirical database in the United States—a separate venture is being spun out to broaden, expand upon, and advance the system. The private venture Lex Machina will offer a commercial version of the clearinghouse at www.lexmachina.com, and host the public interest version Lex Machina IPLC Service, which will remain free to academicians, public interest researchers, judges, policymakers, and the media, at www.lexmachina.org.
"We realized that we had built this robust, highly useful product that serves the public interest and that also has very important commercial application,” said Mark Lemley, the William H. Neukom Professor of Law and the director of the Law, Science & Technology Program, “but maintaining and expanding it was a more expensive proposition then we could raise money for. So we decided to make it self-sustaining through a private venture model. Those who are conducting public interest research have a related, but different set of needs from those who are conducting commercial litigation. This venture is an attempt to serve both those needs and serve them well.”
Lex Machina is believed to be the first instance of an American law school incubating a commercial venture in the manner of an engineering department and is in keeping with Stanford University’s long tradition of hatching important breakthroughs and commercializing technological innovation. The technology underlying the IPLC, and now Lex Machina, is pathbreaking and classified as legal informatics, a nascent field.
When Lex Machina first launched as the Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse in December of 2008, the database included real-time data summaries, industry indices, and trend analysis together with a full-text search engine, providing detailed and timely information that could not be found elsewhere.
Now, the Lex Machina database has grown to cover more than 100,000 IP and antitrust cases filed in U.S. district courts since 2000, as well as outcome summaries on more than 25,000 patent infringement cases—data that can be rendered across roughly a billion different variables. And as of October, 31, 2009 more than 5,000 IP experts and government end users have benefitted from the site, including the White House, Department of Commerce, United States district courts, the Federal Circuit, IPLC advisor groups, more than 200 academicians, company and law firm supporters, non-profit lawyers, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The original IPLC project was the brainchild of Mark Lemley, a leading scholar of empirical research on IP law and policy. It was developed from scratch at Stanford Law School by Joshua Walker and George Gregory, and involved some of the nation’s top computer scientists through Stanford’s Department of Computer Science. The team has logged more than 35,000 hours of unique legal, engineering, and computer science work. Walker personally reviewed every single patent trial from 2000 on, along with tens of thousands of complex procedural events. Walker and Gregory are the founders of the commercial venture Lex Machina; Walker will serve as CEO.
“In addition to supporting the public interest charter, we plan to offer customized intelligence solutions that help in-house and law firm attorneys provide better, faster, more rigorous advice in ‘bet the company’ situations, and across the spectrum of IP litigation generally,” said Joshua Walker. “Specifically, we will offer access to advanced informatics systems and professional (expert) data tools, including proprietary case/motion analysis, and tools law firms increasingly need to win new business and work efficiently. We will help our clients make more informed business decisions about the merits of litigation—based on this unique database of legal facts, and proprietary analytic tools.”
The IPLC was developed by the Law, Science & Technology Program within Stanford Law School over the course of three years (2006 to 2009) with the generous support of a diverse group of industry and philanthropic partners who represent a wide range of industries as well as a good cross section of potential users. Similarly, the new venture has been made possible by a series of corporate investors that include leading tech law firms and operating companies. Going forward Stanford University and Stanford Law School will retain a stake in the venture. Stanford Law School will continue to grow the public site with support from Lex Machina staff and from Stanford Law faculty whose research and intellectual capital will continue to add value and help drive ongoing innovation.
“Lex Machina is an example of Stanford Law School’s ability to produce empirical scholarship that has important real-world applications," said Law School Dean Larry Kramer. "It's also a great example of how public service and private enterprise are not mutually exclusive. Public interest initiatives can dovetail with commercially viable ventures.” For example, Stanford Law School first developed the Stanford Class Action Clearinghouse, a pioneering system which, by making class actions more transparent to everyone, helped to reshape and streamline securities law and policy. “In the same vein,” Kramer said, “Lex Machina was developed in the public interest and is now a commercially viable application that offers a whole new set of tools to help judges, scholars, legislators, and policymakers better understand our IP system and reform IP law and policy, as well as to help lawyers improve client services.
Intellectual property (IP) is a key driver of the American economy, and IP litigation is big business. By one estimate, the nation’s copyright and patent industries alone contributed almost 20 percent of private industry’s share of the U.S. gross domestic product and were responsible for close to 40 percent of all private industry growth. The average patent case costs $5 million in legal fees on each side to litigate. A patent lawsuit can prevent a company from bringing a new product to market, or otherwise stall the kind of innovation that the IP system was meant to spur.